If you were wondering why the opinion pieces from Clive Hamilton and Stephen Conroy on Australian IT were suddenly receiving an extraordinarily huge spike in the number of comments from those supporting mandatory ISP filtering, it’s probably a result of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) requesting their members make themselves heard. According to a post on Whirlpool, ACL presumably issued the following messages to their supporters:

Dear ACL Supporter,

We need your help today in the public debate on internet filtering.

For the past week The Australian newspaper has been running a ‘Super Blog’ aimed at putting the Federal Government’s internet filtering initiative “under the microscope”. The way it works is that they run an opinion piece either for or against the initiative and then open up the issue for people to post their blogs. There have been some very good opinion pieces in favour of the internet filtering initiative (as well as several against) but the vast majority of blogs being posted are strongly against the initiative.

In today’s ‘Super Blog’, Clive Hamilton of Charles Sturt University (and previously the Australia Institute) has written an excellent and well-informed article entitled: ‘Web doesn’t belong to net libertarians’. However, disappointingly, most of those who have posted blogs in response are once again opposed to the initiative and what Clive Hamilton has to say.

If you’re in favour of Internet filtering – and if you read Clive Hamilton’s article you’ll see even more reasons why you should be – could you please consider posting a blog to support Clive Hamilton and the points he is making.

All you have to do is click here and it will to take you to the article. You then just scroll to the bottom where it says ‘post a comment’.

Please do take action on this as it is very important that those people in favour of internet filtering make their voice heard – and not just those who are part of the orchestrated campaign against this important initiative. It should only take a few minutes and if you need some ideas about what to write you could go to our ‘Keep IT clean’ campaign by clicking here and it will give you some assistance.

While you are there you might also like to send an email off to your Federal representatives on this issue, if you haven’t already done so.

For today’s ‘Super Blog’ in The Australian, Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has written an article entitled ‘Filtering doesn’t breach free speech’ which puts forward the need for internet filtering as part of a range of measures to help protect children online and also debunks ‘freedom of speech’ arguments against filtering.

Filtering critics have once again been out in force against the initiative, posting blogs criticising the article, usually with alarmist rhetoric.

We need to reinforce to the Minister and the general public the importance of internet filtering and the fact that there are many people in the community who want to see filtering go ahead.

And here’s a link to a blog from Conroy where you can post your 2c as well.

Good on ’em. It’s free speech at work and I doubt the pro-filtering-brigade will sway many readers with comments like these:

Free speech aside, must images of nakedness be permitted for the sake of free speech? As an Australian, if a slower internet benefits anyone, I’m for it.

There’s no point attacking me and trying to make me fearful for my children’s safety to push your agenda of free porn.

I’m sure our government wouldn’t go to the trouble of introducing such systems if they didn’t make our children dramatically and demonstrably safer. To be able to allow the kids access to a safe internet will be a godsend.

Our daughter has a study desk in her room with other resources available including paper encyclopedias. It’s reasonable that her internet connected computer can be added to that learning environment.

Bring it on!

It is a shame Australian IT hasn’t published comments from at least fifteen people opposed, including me. Who knows how many more aren’t getting through. Update: After emails to Australian IT, this appears to have been rectified and comments from both sides of the fence are now being published.